Preetam Singh Lingwal
Founder & CEO @ GWellth Foods and Beverages
Timeline
Background Before G Wellth: What all of that gave me wasn't a food business plan — it was an understanding of how organizations actually run, how trade relationships get built person to person, and how much patience real growth takes. In 2009 I started Gayatri International Trading Company out of Vashi, Navi Mumbai, sourcing and moving organic grains, sweeteners, and commodities for buyers across India. It grew faster than I expected — by 2012 I was moving enough volume, including a single 100-ton organic soybean consignment to another organic buyer, to account for roughly 8% of the Indian organic trade. Then a run of family disturbance hit at the same time as bigger, better-capitalized players moved into organic trading. Between the financial strain and what was happening at home, I couldn't hold the pace I'd built, and the business lost ground.
The Origin Story: That setback is what actually built G Wellth. On 5 May 2016 I moved from Mumbai to Dehradun and set up Shree Gayatri Organic and Herbal Products, because I'd finally understood I couldn't keep being a trader moving other people's organic produce — I needed my own products, something with my name and my standards on it. That business held a steady ₹60-80 lakh turnover for three straight years, which told me the idea worked.
In 2019-20 I processed 10 tons of sea buckthorn, and working through that volume made it unmistakable: even a solid product business wasn't enough. I needed my own brand, built end to end.
Founder Journey: There's a part of this story that still stings a little to say out loud. I'm from Pauri — a local, a Pahadi, by birth and by roots. And yet building G Wellth in my own home state, I've been treated as an outsider more often than not, including by the state government itself. A decade in, that support still hasn't come. I say this not to complain but because it's true, and because it's shaped how I run this company: as a Pahadi and an entrepreneur, I've had to fight the odds just to keep this venture alive, let alone grow it. What's kept me going is the people who believed in the work anyway — a classmate who backed me when it counted, and a mentor who told me plainly to think big and go after the goal whether the support shows up or not. That's the standard I hold G Wellth to now: to be counted among the top 10 wellness food companies in India, and the first name people think of in the Himalayan region, support or no support.
"Founder & CEO @ GWellth Foods and Beverages"
Most people meeting G Wellth for the first time assume it's a young founder's pivot into wellness because that's the trendy thing to build right now. It isn't, and if you look at my career, it's never really worked that way. I started on mainframe systems, Unix, and Windows 3.0 back when very few people in India had even seen a computer, working in Share Registrar operations — share certificate data processing, bank reconciliation, the unglamorous backbone work that kept financial institutions running. Then I spent the better part of a decade, 2000 to 2008, working international markets across Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and China, in project administration for a British construction firm, running country operations for a Chinese machinery company, doing HR and office administration wherever the work took me.
Looking back, the pattern is obvious: I've spent my whole career a step ahead of what everyone else was paying attention to. Computers before they were common. International trade before it was easy. And now, prebiotic foods before most of India even knows the term.
Then COVID happened, and the whole country suddenly understood what I'd been circling for a decade — that immunity and everyday energy aren't things you can take for granted. That's when my prebiotic food journey actually started, with real support and mentorship from Dr. Apoorva Sharma, MD at Venture Catalyst. Early on, I was told the honest number: building genuine awareness for prebiotic foods in a market like India typically takes eight to twelve years of steady education. I was prepared to put in that time. What I didn't expect was how much the AI revolution would compress that timeline — by 2026, tools I couldn't have imagined when I started let me run awareness work at a pace that would have taken years longer just a few seasons earlier.
Timeline
Background Before G Wellth: What all of that gave me wasn't a food business plan — it was an understanding of how organizations actually run, how trade relationships get built person to person, and how much patience real growth takes. In 2009 I started Gayatri International Trading Company out of Vashi, Navi Mumbai, sourcing and moving organic grains, sweeteners, and commodities for buyers across India. It grew faster than I expected — by 2012 I was moving enough volume, including a single 100-ton organic soybean consignment to another organic buyer, to account for roughly 8% of the Indian organic trade. Then a run of family disturbance hit at the same time as bigger, better-capitalized players moved into organic trading. Between the financial strain and what was happening at home, I couldn't hold the pace I'd built, and the business lost ground.
The Origin Story: That setback is what actually built G Wellth. On 5 May 2016 I moved from Mumbai to Dehradun and set up Shree Gayatri Organic and Herbal Products, because I'd finally understood I couldn't keep being a trader moving other people's organic produce — I needed my own products, something with my name and my standards on it. That business held a steady ₹60-80 lakh turnover for three straight years, which told me the idea worked.
In 2019-20 I processed 10 tons of sea buckthorn, and working through that volume made it unmistakable: even a solid product business wasn't enough. I needed my own brand, built end to end.
Founder Journey: There's a part of this story that still stings a little to say out loud. I'm from Pauri — a local, a Pahadi, by birth and by roots. And yet building G Wellth in my own home state, I've been treated as an outsider more often than not, including by the state government itself. A decade in, that support still hasn't come. I say this not to complain but because it's true, and because it's shaped how I run this company: as a Pahadi and an entrepreneur, I've had to fight the odds just to keep this venture alive, let alone grow it. What's kept me going is the people who believed in the work anyway — a classmate who backed me when it counted, and a mentor who told me plainly to think big and go after the goal whether the support shows up or not. That's the standard I hold G Wellth to now: to be counted among the top 10 wellness food companies in India, and the first name people think of in the Himalayan region, support or no support.
Top Advice
"Don't confuse a résumé with a foundation. Every unrelated job I had before GWellth — HR, admin, country management — taught me something I ended up using here. Stop waiting for direct experience before you start; build the discipline first, wherever you can find it."
None of this came without cost. My own path here had its share of setbacks — enough that when a writer documenting entrepreneurs from the Himalayan region (Col. D P Dimri) wanted a story of adversity turning into something built and lasting, mine was one of the ones he chose to tell. If there's a single line from my own life that's stayed with me through every one of these ventures, it's this: team up with people who'll actually make things happen. Everything else is negotiable.
Wish I Knew Earlier
"How long it actually takes to turn compliance and standards work into something that pays off. I underestimated it badly with my earlier ventures. With GWellth, we started the certification and export groundwork years before we'd need it — that patience is the one thing I wish I'd learned decades sooner."